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Drupal 7: End of Life

Last updated on Aug 21, 2019

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Drupal 7: End of Life

End of Drupal 7

Drupal 7.0 has served us well since it’s January 2011 release. It powered web applications, leading the era of Drupal as a favored option for building any kind of website. Drupal 7 introduced us to more than 11,000 contributed modules, 600 themes, and 200 distributions. Now that it reaches its end of life, we must thank Drupal 7.0 for its service in November of 2021, and let it go.

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Drupal 7.0’s end of life will occur at the same time that Drupal 8 stops receiving support in November of 2021, making way for a new age of improved Drupal core models.

Drupal 7, 8, and 9

It's the classic joke: Why was 7 afraid of 9? Because Drupal 8 was a transitional step in between!

That's right, there will be a sudden switch to Drupal 9 when 7 and 8 both end in the same month. To explain this, we must first warn you that the migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 is a big one. For some teams, this transition will be seamless. For others, it will be more challenging, requiring extra time, talent and resources. In the end, Drupal users will agree that the benefit of transitioning outweighs the cost.

Here are some highlights of what you can expect when you upgrade to Drupal 8:

Easy author editing with a WYSIWYG editor or to create and edit content in-place

Smart language translation

Universal configuration storage

Responsive to touchscreens, tablets, and mobile readers

Improved Compliance

The D8 upgrade makes D7 obsolete. As the Drupal community awaits the release of Drupal 9 on June 2020, the D8 migration will provide a better system for your Drupal site as well as ease the transition into future models.

Drupal 7 will no longer be supported by the community at large. The community will no longer create new projects, fix bugs in existing projects or write documentation for Drupal 7.

There will be no further core commits to Drupal 7.

The Drupal Security Team will no longer provide support or Security Advisories for Drupal 7 core or contributed modules, themes or other projects. Reports about Drupal 7 vulnerabilities might become public.

All Drupal 7 releases on all project pages will be flagged as not supported. Maintainers will be able to change the flag status if they choose to.

On Drupal 7 sites with the update status module, Drupal Core will show up as unsupported.

After November 2021, using Drupal 7 may be flagged as insecure during third-party scans as it will no longer receive support.

Best practice dictates not to use unsupported software — it would not be advisable to continue to build new Drupal 7 sites.

It is recommended to begin planning your migration to Drupal 8 now.

To all you sentimental folks, this is a welcomed change! Updating to Drupal 8 will upgrade your visitors’ user experiences, as well as make your life easier as a content creator. While Drupal 7’s end of life isn't exactly a cause for panic thanks to an extended support period until 2024, you should be eager to make the switch as soon as possible!